By DANIEL GOLEMAN

Published: September 22, 1987

PETER R. BREGGIN, a psychiatrist who is noted for stinging critiques of his own profession, is to appear before the Maryland medical disciplinary board today on charges that he acted irresponsibly when, in a television appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show, he seemed to suggest that psychiatric patients should refuse to take medication.

The charges were made by an organization of families of mental patients. To them and his other opponents, Dr. Breggin's televised comments are tantamount to malpractice. To Dr. Breggin and his supporters, however, the charges are little more than an attempt to silence opposition to the views of mainstream psychiatry. Major Issues in Debate

In any event, the issue has become the focus of hot debate over where to draw the line between free expression of a psychiatrist's opinion and medical irresponsibility. Another issue that is being debated is the psychiatrist's role as a public person.

The disciplinary board, a panel of physicians, can recommend that the state revoke Dr. Breggin's license to practice medicine.

The complaint against Dr. Breggin, who lives and works in Maryland, was filed by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, the most influential lobbying group in the mental health field. Its members are drawn from families of people with schizophrenia and other disorders.

The group cited Dr. Breggin's remarks on a program broadcast April 2. He advised patients to judge their therapists in terms of how much they seemed caring and supportive. If the therapist prescribed a drug at the first session, he said, the patient should leave that therapist's care. 'Don't Take the Drugs'

''Take the prescription and go,'' he said. ''Don't fight about it. Don't get in trouble. But go. Don't take the drugs.''

Some patients stopped taking their psychiatric medications after seeing the program, Laurie Flynn, executive director of the alliance, said in a letter to Dr. Thomas Krajewski, of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the highest-ranking mental health official in the state. In the letter, Ms. Flynn asked whether ''an M.D. who prescribes for all psychiatric patients across America without even having seen these patients should continue to be licensed by the State of Maryland.''

''The families of the mentally ill have every right to question the credentials of any psychiatrist who makes such statements,'' said E. Fuller Torrey, a psychiatrist in Washington who has debated Dr. Breggin. ''Yet I respect the right of any psychiatrist to hold views in disagreement with the prevailing ones.''

Dr. Breggin made his controversial recommendation as he urged patients to find therapists - psychiatrists, psychologists or social workers - who will give them talking treatments rather than medication. Remarks Are Defended

''Nothing Dr. Breggin said was irresponsible,'' said Loren Mosher, a psychiatrist and former chief of the center for studies of schizophrenia at the National Institute of Mental Health. ''He was saying that people might consider talking therapy before taking pills, and that if anyone wants to give you a neuroleptic after just one visit, you certainly should be cautious.'' Neuroleptics are powerful drugs used to treat schizophrenia.

Some specialists in mental health law do not consider Dr. Breggin's remarks to be particularly controversial. ''All voluntary patients have the right to refuse medication,'' said Leonard Rubenstein, legal director of the Mental Health Law Project in Washington.

Dr. Breggin, who studied at Syracuse Medical School under Dr. Thomas Szasz, the noted psychiatrist and critic of psychiatry, made several other controversial statements on the program. He charged, for instance, that the major anti-psychotic drugs used by psychiatrists ''cause brain damage in half or more of the patients given long-term treatment'' - an argument he has elaborated in his book ''Psychiatric Drugs: Hazards to the Brain,'' published by the Springer Publishing Company.

On a later Oprah Winfrey show, Dr. Breggin debated these and other points with a representative of the American Psychiatric Association, the leading professional organization of psychiatrists. Side Effect of Neuroleptics

The major side effect that Dr. Breggin is referring to is tardive dyskinesia, a disorder that causes spasms and twitches. It occurs in about 25 percent of those who take neuroleptics for a period of several years, according to studies reviewed by Dilip Jesti and Richard Wyatt of the National Institute of Mental Health.

The view that mental illness has biological causes is ''all lies'' repeated to justify giving drugs, he said. Electroshock therapy is ''a crime,'' he asserted, and the typical psychiatrist is ''a technocrat who has no sense of the human spirit, no sense that human issues are involved'' in the problems people bring for treatment.

In an interview, Dr. Breggin said he believed the charges against him were retaliation for his dissenting views on psychiatry. ''This is an attack on the reform movement in psychiatry,'' he said.

''These charges raise very serious First Amendment issues,'' said Norman Rosenberg, director of the Mental Health Law Project.

Representative Ronald V. Dellums, a California Democrat who is a board member of the Center for the Study of Psychiatry, an organization Dr. Breggin heads, wrote a supporting letter charging that the hearing ''is fundamentally a political attack rather than a valid medical criticism of Dr. Breggin.''